Iran

Amir Darabi“Dastan-e Tanha”

Amir Darabi is a 19 year-old piano player who was classically trained from age of 3. He expanded his piano skills by learning jazz piano when he was a teenager and a few years ago he started writing his own compositions.

This album titled “Dastan-e Tanha” (Lonely Hands) is the 9th edition of a project called “Ahvalate Shakhsi” (The State of the Individual), which gives a chance to young musicians to publish their first record.

These mostly-solo instrumental albums are “contemporary musical autobiographies” of a new generation of future musicians.

Samin Baghcheban “Charshanbeh Souri”

There is a generation who – for the first time as a kid – listened to “Rangin Kamoon”, a collection of Samin Baghcheban’s symphonic and choral tunes for children published in 1978, or even learned how to sing and play them in kindergarten.

This children music album is part of our collective memory. After many years, the composer’s son Kaveh – himself a musician – collected and recorded some of his father’s unpublished works.

“Charshanbeh Souri” (Firecracker Wednesday), the eponymous hit song of this album, refers to the festival of firecrackers on the eve of the last Wednesday of the year before Nowruz. Samin Baghcheban passed away on Charshanbeh Souri, March 19, 2008.

Se Noghte Band “Jaee Baraye Hamisheh”

Alternative rock band, Se Noghte (meaning “Ellipsis”), was founded in 2012 in the city of Shiraz by Arash Rostami on vocal and Kian Shams on electric guitar.

Their debut album, “Jaee Baraye Hamisheh” (A Place for Ever) produced by the band, was released last summer and is among the best Iranian releases of 2016. In their lyrics they use simple words that can be followed easily, but those words are mature and sit well in their music.

Both the texts and the music have been formed and completed along each other, during the process of jamming and rehearsing.

Soheil Nafisi “Tarh-e Now”

The fourth album of the singer-songwriter Soheil Nafisi was released at the very end of 2016.

Unlike his other albums where he used to focus on contemporary poetry, this time he made use of poems of a 14th century poet, Hazef of Shiraz.

“Tarh-e Now” (The New Design) has been described as “songs for ghazals of Hafez”, and it includes 17 selected ghazals sung in Soheil Nafisi’s trademark way of singing, accompanied by the acoustic guitar.